Musician Profile: Molly Burch

Songwriter flourishes through heartache on debut album, "Please Be Mine"

Text and Photo by Bryan C. Parker

Published: February 12, 2017

Soft-spoken and demure, Molly Burch was a freshman in high school when she first performed in public. Her older sister Samy, a senior, recruited her for an experimental play, in which she had Molly sing a capella dressed as Divine, the drag queen from John Waters films like Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble.

Until then singing had been a purely solitary act for Burch, one that “helped with the struggles of growing up.” That all changed with her unlikely stage debut.

Born in L.A. to a casting director mother and movie producer and writer father, Burch was a fan of female vocalists like Billie Holiday, Lauryn Hill, and Mariah Carey by the time she was in middle school. She went on to study jazz vocal performance at the University of North Carolina in Asheville before a breakup with a boyfriend led to a move to Austin. Amid the heartbreak and loneliness, she turned to greats like Patsy Cline and Dusty Springfield, eventually discovering her own voice by penning songs about her experiences. (Burch’s old Asheville flame, Dailey Toliver, ended up moving to the capital city, and the couple reunited.)

Burch confronts universal feelings of love and longing on her new album,Please Be Mine, out Feb. 17. With Toliver playing guitar, helping out on keys, and inspiring much of its content, the album was recorded live over just two days at Moon Phase Ranch in Dripping Springs with engineer and co-producer Dan Duszynski. Burch hadn’t originally intended to record her soulful voice live. “Ultimately I’m happy about it,” says the 26-year-old. “This way the vocals are more real and raw.”

When the album was finished, Burch submitted a demo to Brooklyn-based label Captured Tracks, which offered her a deal just a couple days later—a rare quick response. Not a bad result at all, considering she had feared she wouldn’t be able to complete the album due to limited funds.

While Burch credits her parents for making her “feel like it was possible to follow a passion and be successful,” when it came time to dedicate her album, she chose the person who really started it all: her sister Samy.